The Funeral of an Ex —a poem by John Grey

Gone without short dresses and big eyes
on a rainy winter afternoon,
your memory in my head,
the remedy all mourners work with,
my time going on.
yours withering in the chill.


Strangers put you down,
a good soul
amid an American city
while I retreat to my home
to see how well
I can weep for other beings,
years after longing
has reduced itself to inevitability.


I look over my shoulder
as I walk to the car.
What do I expect?
That you will follow me?


But nothing to worry.
The dark has no interest
in what is left of the light.
My footsteps are mine alone,
to crumble on their own time-table.


On the way home,
I wonder where you've really gone.
No real joy there, I expect.
But no cruel debts either.
But what do I know?
You have made yourself the deepest of secrets.


I cruise the streets aggrieved
while hailing the voice
of a wailing songstress
on the radio.
It will have to do
until some old photograph comes along.


___
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review.

Secrets and Their Keep —poetry by John Grey

It's secrets I'm talking about.
Concealed subjects.
Confidences suspended in time.


And all of the pressures
that insist they clam tight
or pop open.


To tell or not to tell -
they come at you from all sides.
shrinking even further
the space in which you operate.


Loyalty to a friend
or relief that the truth
is out in the open at last.


No credit cards.
No safety pins.
No nail clippers or letter openers.
This is all you have to work with.


___
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology No Achilles, with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo.

Those Early Outlaws —poetry by John Grey

Girl next door laughed.

I was hiding behind

an old oil drum;

with one eye on the fence palings ~

the Younger gang -

and my finger on the trigger

of a cap gun.

She was standing on a box,

peering over the heads

of the outlaws,

pointing at me

and giggling uncontrollably.

She said to me,

"What a goof.

Still playing cowboys

at your age."

She was a year older than me

as I remember.

In my head, :

the backyard was an open range,

the house was Dodge City.

If not for my imagination,

I would have been

totally confined

to one more suburban lot,

no different from

the one she lived in.

She played 45's

on a tiny record player,

tried on her mother's lipstick

and insisted she was

going to be a secretary

when she grew up.

I pointed my gun at her and fired,

shouting, "Take that Cole Younger!"

She laughed some more.

I took that as a clean hit.

___
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and Sanskrit with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and the Coe Review.

Solo for Bed and Kitchen —a poem by John Grey

It's not the quiet exactly.
And nor the prayers
that may as well be to God
as to any other living creature.
Nor the dreams that I know will come,
and populated like the bed is not.
It's the heartbeat, surely,
another's, beneath the sheets,
so close, it would inspire me
to hear my own.

It's not the mornings,
so democratic
they wake the whole neighborhood.
Nor the breakfasts,
cooked as simply as they can be
when they're just for one.
Nor the memories
that creep up on me
then just as slowly slip away.
It's flesh.
I can't see where flesh goes
when it leaves the chest, the arms,
the legs, behind,
There's nothing in this kitchen
that's remotely like a face.

Radio's on
but the disc jockey's not talking to me.
Sun is out
but purely as a bright golden illustration
of its own indifference.
Water's boiling. Coffee for one.
I'll feel its warmth inside me.
Now that's a warm that knows its place.


___
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and Sanskrit with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, Owen Wister Review and Louisiana Literature.

From the Bridge — a poem by John Grey

This river's rib -
austere, up out of chaos,
bones firmed by steel -
built from what remains
in architects' heads
of dinosaurs -
bridge, rising above
destruction's smoke and dust;

I walk across and
watch sails like swaying cables
slip beneath,
laden barges hug its shadow,
ducks gather at its concrete feet.

Cars pass behind me
seeking the seas or prairies.
And in the distance,
buildings, roads,
hills and houses,
bolted deep beneath.

___
John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Sanskrit and the science fiction anthology, Futuredaze with work upcoming in Clackamas Literary Review, New Orphic Review and Nerve Cowboy.

Issue #013 - Summer/Fall 2010

Review 

The Seminal Transmission of Orphic Ghosts: Garry Thomas Morse's After Jack Reviewed - Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman

Poetry

Conformity & Right Response - Geordie de BoeR
Seeing Myself Naked - Dennis Wilken
How True - Nancy Devine
The Slender Scent - James Robison
Low - M.P. Powers
Bless My Way - Peycho Kanev
Walnuts - Justin Hyde
Shaved Clean & Nonchalant - Oleh Lysiak
One Story House - DB Cox
Bumper Sticker - John Grey
Those Who Ruled Us & The Last Hoax - Rod Tipton
The Crackerjack Reality of it All - Ernie Culver

Poetry by John Grey |

BUMPER STICKER

It reads MY CHILD
IS AN HONOR STUDENT
AT THOMAS JEFFERSON HIGH.
It doesn’t say
he looked into his heart
and tried to write
but came up against
a pain and spirit
too expressionless
for any poem,
that he imagined himself
hot and hungry on a raft,
a thousand miles from land,
that he cut his finger
and the blood flowed
and he feared that it was
hollowing out his body.

Nothing there of
how he came to identify with
a roadkill Jesus
on a cross of asphalt,
or the dark, smelly water
at the well bottom,
or the squeal of an electric guitar
chain-sawing through its own feedback.

It just said he had been set
some small insignificant task
unrelated to his life
and he had completed it successfully
by paying it no mind.